While speaking with American Family Association talk show host Sandy Rios, Fox News commentator Todd Starnes and Family Research Council vice president Jerry Boykin floated the conspiracy theory that new security warnings might be a political ploy to distract from the “scandals” under President Obama.

Neither Boykin nor Starnes had any evidence to back up their claim. In fact, the last time such a move occurred was under Republican leadership: during the Bush administration, former Department of Homeland Security secretary Tom Ridge revealed that he faced pressure from top officials to raise the terror alert during the 2004 campaign for political purposes.

Rios asked Boykin if the threats were genuine or “a way of covering for the scandals that are going on?” Boyin said that “both” of her claims are true.

He claimed Obama dismissed warnings about Al Qaeda’s work with other terrorist organizations, “the network is growing and the threat is very serious so that’s not what the administration has been telling us.” However, Obama actually made the point in May that Al Qaeda has become “more diffuse” and working in “regionalized networks”.

After distorting Obama’s views, Boykin went on to claim the alerts are an attempt to “deflect” attention from the administration’s “scandals”: “I think you’re absolutely right, I think there are so many things that are occurring today that are embarrassing for the administration, that are causing people to start to wake up and take a look at what the administration is doing and I think this is a way of deflecting attention away from all these other scandals.”

Not to be outdone, Starnes said that the warnings could be a “false flag” and asked, “I mean, is the entire planet endanger? Because they’re putting the entire world on this alert. Unfortunately in this administration it’s like the principle of the little boy who cried wolf, we just don’t know when to believe this administration.”